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Talking Heads

I was provided yet another example of why technology support for Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) is so competely frustrating just this morning. Individuals are usually quite knowledgeable in their own areas, but none of those areas coordinate with one another directly and management can't be bothered to communicate directly with the knowledgeable individuals. Thus when technical instructions and processes change, the technology specialists in the field at the other agencies rarely find out until they attempt one of those processess … pick one, any one … and it doesn't work.
We've been jumping through hoops for months to convert the local email accounts to enterprise accounts that will be accessible any where and have fewer storage and content restrictions. The available guidance is dated June 2012, but this morning when we expected the processes to be in full swing and were following the last know procedures, we found out that none of it was necessary. During the course of the conversion, better processes had been implemented that imposed fewer delays and restrictions on the users. After spending the morning policing violatons of the first guidance, I had to write my own replacement guidance and let everyone know.
I feel imcompletent even if my manager understands how it happened. My manager and my users are all frustrated and confused. On our end, the "improvements" actually led to bigger investments of time and energy. In effect, a waste of our time and energy because they couldn't be bothered to invest a minimal amount themselves.
While I understand this is a gigantic undertaking, only a few organizations are processed each day, there truly is no excuse for the "talking heads" supposedly "controlling" the project not coordinating or confirming that the organizations are ready and have the most recent guidance. And, if our workloads aren't an acceptable excuse, then neither are theirs.

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“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” ― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.” – Simone de Beauvoir

“Naive as it may sound, inoculating society against the antisocial requires, at bottom, persuading people of what is palpably true: that society has value and everyone should contribute.” – Bruce Cannon Gibney, Author